The Nitrogen Cycle Experiment: Why we failed and what's next.

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Now that the first nitrogen cycle experiment is over, there's a few things we could touch on that I felt were more suitable for the jounral rather than the actual experiment stage. Namely, This:

http://www.apifishcare.com/pdf/FINAL_QUICK_START_Science_Sheet.pdf

Now how do I know that's real? A friend of mine who works for a petstore has spoken with one of their chemists, and I found out about this after I started the experiment. There are a couple of sheets that I could scan and put up here, which are basically flyers, but I am hesitant to do so, as those were not given to me and I'd be uploading them without premission of a company (I'm not really here to endorse or say anything negative, and if I did I might be setting myself up for trouble).

If you try crunching the numbers a little on the experiement, though it is a fail in my eyes, there's a few interesting things to be gathered from what results we did get. As expected the more traditional methods were just begining to work in these small tanks whereas the commercial products were oxidizing ammonia and nitrites up one side and down the other.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure those of you interested saw that. There are studies from the university of Georgia concerning a couple of their products we might touch on one day way down the road.

As for the experiemnt. I always knew it was going to have to be repeated, and it's not easy accepting something as stupid as a failed heater to blame the end of the test on. But this will happen again. Likely in larger aquariums, over a longer period of time, so we can see more in depth intervals and actually extrapolate some information (knowing that nitrosomonas divide around every 7 hours and Nitrobacter every 10 to 18). We may even attempt other commercial products.

But part of the point of this project was to tank a little bit about the viability of the bacteria involved from the commercial products, which sadly, fate has not set me up to do. Whatever the case, it should be noted I have had good results from both of these products, Tetra Safe Start and API Quick Start, to use them more than once on a new set up.